Clothes, recipes, kids, interiors, London…

I am a big believer in getting rid of clothes that you no longer wear. It is pointless to hang on to things that don’t suit you, or you never wear.

But more and more I find myself lamenting things I have given to charity in fits of pique – I was sick of the sight of them or I just couldn’t fathom when or how they would come back into fashion. Only, years later, to miss them. Or for them to come back into fashion.

Two things are bothering me at the moment – a red flowery printed skater dress from TopShop in 1992, which would look amazing now with a black leather jacket. And a checked flannel shirt dress that I wore during both pregnancies.

It would be terrific and very now to wear it with boots and tights and, later, with a beanie and maybe an oversized cardigan? With a lot of black eyeliner? Very Instagram Tiny Fragile Freezing Princess/grunge lite.

And now I just really want it back but I’d feel an idiot spending even £20 on this very similar one from H&M (pictured above), having tossed out a perfectly good one years ago.

Why didn’t I keep it? I know why. I looked at it and went: I hate you and I never want to see you again.

Anyway, I am now much more cautious when getting rid of things. I only get rid of that which truly doesn’t fit or doesn’t suit me. Anything that I’m just a bit sick of, I put away for another time. I think it’s called “archiving” for douchebags.

I think pregnancy is terrible for creating clothes-sickness. There’s only a few things I felt good in early on and so I wore them to their deaths. Or rather, executions. I chucked a really nice grey jumper dress and flannel shirt in a fit of hatred, and now sometimes find myself looking for them, before remembering I got rid of them, and feeling really pissed off with myself. It’s hard because nothing beats clearing out stuff you don’t wear and knowing you’re not going to spend another wasted five minutes in front of a mirror feeling shit in that thing you hung onto last time. You’ve reminded me that I have a skater dress that I’ve, ahem, archived, for various reasons (didn’t work for breast feeding; wrong season; was too fat for it and looked like a weeble) but that would be perfectly nice now though.

I had an extreme wardrobe purge a couple of weeks ago and feel totally liberated. However I know it’s only a matter of time before I start missing things or believe I am going mad when I can’t find that stone wash denim jacket that I’ve just chucked out.

I had this floral dress from
Warehouse that looked pretty awful on me – I would try it on every so often in the hope one of us had changed – the result was always predictably the same. I gave it to charity and thought no more of it – until a few weeks later – in Heat magazine in “fashionably dresses stars of the week” was Sienna Miller wearing my dress (although clearly not mine as I am 98 sizes bigger than her) doing “vintage boho chic”. This had haunted me and I subsequently keep all manner of ill fitting, badly suited clothes in the hopes that one day history might repeat itself. Hope everything is sorting itself out.

I never regret throwing anything away. I love getting of stuff. For anything to stay, it has to be at least one of the following: (1) do you love it? (2) do you need it? (3) is it going to make you money? And “love” is the least powerful. That’s my life mantra. (Along with, children are much less vile out than in). Xxx

Don’t tell me this. I’ve just had a fit of throwing stuff out that I haven’t worn in 2 years, about 20 lovely dresses from Hobbs and whistles etc in size 10 that I used to wear to work because right now, at 6 months pregnant, I feel like I’ll never ever be a size 10 again and probably never go back to my career. I’ve kinda left myself with nothing but a few pairs of horrible maternity leggings and a few tops, and I’ll probably want to burn them in 3 months time. Oh well, at least the British heart foundation shop I gave them all to should make a lot of money on them. Elaine x

Oh, just buy the £20 one. If you really want it then buy it. Realistically, there will be some subtle difference between the one you got rid of and this new one that would still make the old one unwearable.

I still get occasionally misty-eyed about a perfectly worn-in biker jacket I flogged when I was 18, so I could buy silk-cut and vodka and cokes. I console myself with the fact that it probably wouldn’t meet over my breasts these days….